


In This City of Madmen

by Poetiicdissonance



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Acceptance, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Carlos in the Desert Otherworld, Cheating, Developing Relationship, Episode: e049 Old Oak Doors Part B, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Sex, Infidelity, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, POV Cecil Palmer, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Episode: e049 Old Oak Doors Part B, Post-Strex Kevin, Secrets, Slow Burn, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Universe Alteration, musical chairs of bad coping mechanisms, sex as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24923863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetiicdissonance/pseuds/Poetiicdissonance
Summary: There’s a click, and then a thump as Kevin's back hits the studio wall, and then they were all staring at the space where the door had been only moments before in stunned silence. “Listeners… the door is gone.”The Old Oak Doors close, Strex is defeated, and all is saved, except for the people that have to live with the fallout.Cecil is left behind on the right side of the doors, and maybe it's madness, or lonliness, or a thousand other reasons, but he goes out to dinner with Kevin and then he falls into bed with him. It's a mistake, and he tells himself it will never happen again, and yet... and yet...
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer, Kevin/Cecil Palmer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	In This City of Madmen

**Author's Note:**

> ... This idea was partially spawned from two things: 1: "Well... there's a bunch of fics where Carlos and Kevin were a thing in the Desert Otherworld, so what if i just... had it with the other side of that pairing instead?" 2: Carlos' line about how when the doors closed it was because eveyone was on the right side, and how technically, Kevin was from the desert originally. 
> 
> Oh, before I forget, both the weather and the title are from the song "Maintain the Madness" by the Jane Austen Argument, which is linked at the end of the fic, and is a definite all-encompassing sort of feel for this fic and where Cecil is mentally and emotionally.
> 
> The actual reason the door closes is left pretty open, but i imagined that either the door decided to close because Kevin was 'of Night Vale' (or the closest approximation, so Desert Bluffs), and so he needed to stay, or the events of Old oak Doors just kind of shift... to be half an hour earlier.
> 
> Please enjoy! (I'll see you all at the end of the fic, and hope you haven't armed yourselves with pitchforks and other sharp, author-stabbing implements!)

The booth is bathed in light- such a brilliant,  _ blinding _ light, turning the floor and the part of the desk it touches transparent. And Cecil knows without a doubt, that this blinding white light, is the sort of light that bleaches the desert to white and drives men to do insane things. It is the light of the Smiling God, and of the unraveling of all things taking place in the sky outside the studio.

Before Cecil realizes it, Steve is grabbing Kevin by the lapels and shoving him towards the light. As Steve does, it’s second nature to narrate it to his listeners, because he’s a radio professional, and that’s what he  _ does _ . As Cecil does, the door starts to close and it doesn't quite feel real. Kevin is falling towards the light, eyes- but the dark, void things he calls eyes- are wide in surprise as he stumbles towards the door. Cecil is watching with bated breath to see which one gets there fastest. Does the door close, or does Kevin fal-

There’s a click, and then a thump as Kevin's back hits the studio wall, and then they were all staring at the space where the door had been only moments before in stunned silence. “Listeners… the door is  _ gone.” _

_ - _

StrexCorp is defeated because of so many reasons- Dana, the Masked Army, brave, wonderful,  _ heroic _ Carlos who got trapped on the wrong side of the door, because for some reason the universe had decided that he was not ‘of Night Vale’ whatever that meant. As if he hadn’t made this place his home and found where he belonged in the world.

They call each other, and it’s good, it’s _so_ good, wonderful even, but it’s not **right**. He wakes up expecting the familiar warmth of Carlos’ body beside him, and it’s not there. Days turn into a week, turn into two weeks and he’s _still_ **_not_** **_home._** It gets harder to believe that he will be. Carlos had promised two weeks at most, and Cecil had spent enough time checking the date that the very idea of a fortnight as a unit of measurement starts to feel like a fiction. 

He has three bottles in the kitchen, and he’s spent more time at work in the past three weeks than he thinks he’s done since before meeting Carlos. Lance is worried, Cecil knows, and so are the interns, and he knows he should care but it all feels so unimportant- distant. So he does his broadcast, and he goes home to the house that he should be sharing with his boyfriend, and he drinks, because at least the fog from the alcohol doesn’t ache in his chest, it just burns as it goes down.

-

The first time Cecil sees Kevin after everything, it’s been a month, and he's just finished his broadcast. There’s a familiar shape leaning against the wall, head bent and looking down at his phone. It’s like looking into his own corrupted silhouette, and Cecil knows it’s Kevin, because of course it is. He had vanished after he had left the booth four weeks ago, back to Desert Bluffs, Cecil assumes like everyone else who had been working for Strex. He just didn’t know why he was  _ here _ now.

Kevin looks up, and his eyes-that-aren't-eyes land on Cecil, who's still standing in the doorway, one hand resting on the handle, though that’s more because he hasn’t moved it than any desire to escape back into the studio, even if it was a tempting idea. "Old friend!" Kevin greets with a smile, though it's not quite as... disturbing as it had been when Strex had still been around. It’s not quite right either, it stretches and pulls on the stitches in his mouth, and it’s like looking at a parody of a smile, but it’s… better than it was. A little bit more like a real smile and not whatever Kevin- and Strex- had called a smile.

"We're not friends. I don't even like you." Cecil says, but the words have no passion behind them. He's exhausted, and all he wants is to go back home and drown his sorrows in a bottle of alcohol. He doesn't want to have to deal with his deranged double, or why he’s here.

Kevin shrugs, and slides the phone back into his pocket, and Cecil can't help but notice that he looks... tired as well. Like him really, more than he did before. His blazer's still bloodstained, but none of it looks fresh (though Cecil suspects that all of his clothes are like that. Somethings, he imagines, are unimportant in comparison to rebuilding his city in the wake of the revolution in Night Vale, and the subsequent fall of Strex). The rictus grin Strex had etched into Kevin’s face was beginning to heal, if slowly and it made him look a little less unnatural. 

"I left something here when we cleared out, I was wondering if I could get it back?" and whatever Cecil had been expecting, it wasn't that, though he knows  _ exactly _ what it is that Kevin’s talking about, because the picture had been left on his desk. (And that alone, came with the knowledge that Kevin had worked at his desk, had chosen the same spot in the office, and that maybe they weren’t so dissimilar always, so dissimilar still).

"It's a picture right? Gold frame?" When he'd first seen it, he'd thought it was his-- the woman in the photo looked just like Abby, and in her arms was a child with the same expression he had seen on Janice's face a thousand times, but the lighting was all wrong, and he'd never had a photo of Janice and Abby that looked like that, and if he had, it certainly hadn't been on his desk.

Kevin nodded, and the smile was a softer thing than Cecil had ever expected to see on his double. "Yeah, it's my sister and her child." And he supposes it makes sense, if they all had doubles, it would make sense for Abby and Janice to, but the idea that Kevin had a sister- people he cared about, and that cared about him in return, seemed like such an alien idea, so at odds with the picture of his double he’d always had, and that had always been maintained by his actions.

Cecil let out a sigh, and beckoned him towards the door leading into the office space. He’d placed the photo face-down in one of his desk drawers because he didn't want to look at it and see something that looked so much like his life, his family but wasn’t. (He didn't really know why he’d bothered to keep it, but he had, and he’s almost glad he had because Kevin looked so happy to see it). 

He passes it over, and the soft smile turns into something a little brighter and a little bit more human, and for a moment, Cecil thinks he sees what Kevin could have looked like before Strex had come to Desert Bluffs. “Here.” He expects it to end there, and to never have to see his double again.

-

The next time he meets Kevin it's three days later and he’s sitting in the uncomfortable blue chairs in the reception area looking at his phone again, and Cecil’s really, really not interested in dealing with Kevin today. The day had been bad enough without this. He lets out a sigh, and just leans against the doorframe. “What did you forget?” Because that has to be what it is, it’s the only reason he could possibly think of why Kevin would have travelled the forty-five minutes from Desert Bluffs to Night Vale to spend… however long he was in the chairs in the reception area. 

Kevin stands and looks towards Cecil as he slips his phone into his pocket, whatever he was looking at forgotten. “Bright orange bottle,” he says, holding up a hand, two fingers spaced a few inches apart. “Full of yellow pills.”

“Come on then.” Cecil says, and turns to head back to his desk, not bothering to check if Kevin was following. He leaned down, opening the long, thin drawer that ran just under the wooden top of his desk, fingers skimming the cluttered objects until he reached the aforementioned half-empty bottle of yellow pills, tossing it to Kevin who caught it with ease, the bottle joining his phone in his pocket. “What did you need them for?”

“The mayor’s trying to collect all of the Strex medication. He hopes if no one has it, then they can try and control the withdrawal.” Kevin explains, looking unbothered by the idea of enduring the withdrawal, which Cecil doubts would be kind; not if it was created to help keep people on the drugs and under their control.

“Why can’t you just make more? Avoid it all together?”

“Now that Strex is gone, we don't have the infrastructure, or the knowledge of how to produce it.” Kevin says, and it made sense, he supposes. Certainly he didn’t remember the last time he could remember Desert Bluffs, and not think about Strex. It must have been when he was still an intern, or maybe just after he had taken over the show. (And there’s a part of him that wants to ask why Kevin’s telling him all of this, but that would require  _ asking _ , and talking about Strex and Desert Bluffs more, and  _ no _ ).

The conversation lapses, and Kevin tilts his head, looking at Cecil curiously. “You should come to dinner with me.” he says, and it sounds more like a statement than a question. 

“And  _ why _ exactly would I do that?” Cecil asked, trying to mimic his radio voice, where there was more emotion than just the flat and empty apathy that seemed to characterize him since Carlos had gotten lost on the wrong side of an Old Oak Door, and fallen into the Desert Otherworld. The attempt fell flat, and he could see the disappointed look Kevin gave him for trying- the problem with them being in the same profession he guessed. All those quirks and tells that no one else would notice that Kevin did. 

“Because cheap diner food with me still sounds better than day- two day old pizza and cheap beer.” Kevin said, the correction surprising Cecil, mostly because it wasn’t wrong, and the offer more still, because most people still looked at him and saw ‘half’, saw ‘missing’ because it had been over a month now, and Carlos was still gone, and most people had stopped asking after he kept refusing. (Lance and the man at the liquor store both seemed concerned by the amount he’d thrown into himself into the dubious coping mechanisms… that he’s not telling Carlos, because there’s already so much for him to worry about and Cecil didn’t need to add to that).

“It’s wine.” He corrects, because Kevin was  _ right  _ on all points, and he refuses to admit that fact, better to focus on the small detail than the fact that he hadn’t cooked anything in a week, and hadn't gone out anywhere aside from home and work in even longer, and even then, the wine was only one of the bottles, cheaper, harder liquors were the others.

“Wine then, the point still stands.”

It was probably madness, and if Carlos wasn’t gone and still not back, he would have refused and laughed Kevin out of his studio, but Carlos  _ was _ gone, and if he was honest, the chance to get out, even if for an hour was tempting. “Fine.”

-

He has a good time, and it’s the most surprising thing. He doesn't think about Carlos and the unbridgeable distance between them, or the fact that the person he was eating with was Kevin- the mass-murdering double that had taken his place on air and helped try and take over his town. That all fell away, and they talked, and for a minute, Cecil thinks that had they met earlier, had they met  _ before _ , they may have been friends. 

He mentions Khoshekh, and laughs when Kevin says he would hide in the mens bathroom and pet the kittens in order to hide from Lauren. Kevin laughs when Cecil tells him about a bowling league tournament where all the balls turned to sand. And before he realizes it, it’s been three hours, and the sun had gone down unnoticed by the two radio hosts. He feels lighter than he had in weeks. Even Kevin’s eyes don't seem as monstrous as they had, and it’s a weird feeling to look into the void and think ‘eye’ and not ‘void’ or ‘eye-that-is-not-an-eye’.

Kevin settles back into his chair, looking out of the window at the quickly darkening desert. “I should go, have to get back to the Bluffs before it gets too late, too dark.” 

“You can stay the night with me.” Cecil says, the offer surprising even himself. 

“I wouldn’t want to impose, it’s not so far I can’t drive.

“No, really, it’s okay.” And more surprising, is that the offer is genuine. 

-

The next day, Kevin’s at the station again, and this time Cecil just tilts his head. “We’re going for dinner.” His double says, in the same way he might if it were a fact, like the desert was hot, or the sun was always loud. Cecil just shrugs and waves to Lance as he leaves. Usually, he’d have editorials to write, and segments to record, but he’d done so many since Carlos left, that he could leave early one night (he’d done enough, that if it weren’t for the news portion of his news show, he’d have enough pre-recorded segments to run the show for at least a month). The show was done for the day after all, and last night had been  _ fun _ . 

-

He wakes up in the morning, with an arm pressed over his eyes, and a particularly warm spot pressed to his right side, and for a minute, Cecil almost expects to open his eyes and see Carlos, and realize that the past month had all been a terrible, terrible dream; instead, he looks over and sees Kevin, and he swears his heart stops (but Carlos had told him that wasn’t scientifically possible, and oh God  **_Carlos._ ** Carlos who was still trapped in the Desert Otherworld, Carlos his  **_boyfriend_ ** , whom he loved). Cecil blinks, and hopes it’s all a dream, but Kevin’s still there, looking peaceful and far too… too much like Kevin and not enough like his boyfriend, and Cecil goes very still, and doesn’t breathe as the world seems to fall apart around him, mind trying to  _ comprehend _ what would have led to this.

They’d gone out for dinner, and there’d been a bit of alcohol but certainly not enough for this, and all he remembers is getting back to the house, and then the memory dissolves into arms, and skin, and he has _no_ _doubt_ what happened last night. There wasn’t enough… of any other options to explain this, or enough justification for what had caused it except maybe loneliness and shared sadness and even that seems weak and paltry in the face of this betrayal. He feels like he’s done something terrible, like drunk all the alcohol in his cupboards, or dug his own grave, but he’s tired in the way that no sleep had managed to fix, and for the first time since Carlos had left, Cecil doesn't feel the same hollowness in his chest from waking up alone in a bed that’s far too cold, and far too empty.

Carlos will never forgive him, Cecil thinks, and tries to push the thought away. He just has to make certain it never happens again. It’s okay, it was a moment of weakness, and it’s over now. He’ll… he’ll explain it to Carlos, and to Kevin, and keep doing what he’s been doing. The alcohol doesn’t burn as much as this does.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, barely breathing, thoughts swirling. The clock on the wall says half an hour, but the clock on the wall  _ also _ likes to sing Madonna and tick backwards, so Cecil can’t bring himself to believe in it’s accuracy. He wouldn’t put it past it to be purposely ticking faster to drive him into a state of disarray. 

When Kevin does wake up, it’s later by some indeterminate amount of time, and the heavy feeling in Cecil’s chest hasn’t gotten any less weighty. Kevin looks up at Cecil, still half-asleep, and he wants to say something like ‘How could you?’ or even ‘Get out, and never come back’, but he can’t make his vocal cords work, so he just sits up, and pushes the blankets off. “I’m going to make coffee.” Coffee was good, coffee was safe, and it would give him time to work through his own thoughts as he hammered the beans and whispered secrets to the kettle to stop it turning all the water into vinegar.

He leaves the room, picking up a pair of galaxy-print pants he had tossed over a chair a week earlier and slips them on. It’s better than being bare, and pants make him feel a little less exposed and stripped to his basic essentials, both physically and emotionally. By the time he’s done the coffee, Kevin’s come out of the bedroom, dressed back in his clothes from yesterday, though the shirt’s top button is undone, and the blazer is draped over his arm.

Cecil passes over a purple NVCR cup, and takes a drink from his own bright green one with a bad chemistry joke on it. It was Carlos’ third favourite, right after the blue one with a geology pun (even if geology was illegal, and oh, how his heart cracks when he thinks about the cup, and Carlos, and how Carlos wasn’t here to drink from the cup and tell him illegal facts about rocks), and the one with a periodic table on it. He watches as Kevin pours a copious amount of milk and sugar into his cup, the colouring going from a dark black, to a lighter cream, in contrast to Cecil’s own coffee which was only a little off black. 

He was leaning against one counter, and Kein was sitting half on the kitchen table, half standing, neither of them talking or making a move to sit down properly. The air was thick, and Cecil’s pretty certain even the Faceless Old Woman was staying far away from the kitchen, though he has no way of knowing that for sure. 

They finish the coffee in silence, the digital clock on the stove slowly passing from 8:38 to 9:03 a.m, and this was probably more accurate than the bedroom clock, Cecil thinks, as he stares into the empty cup, almost willing it to fill with coffee so he didn't have to move to put it in the sink. 

“I should go.” Kevin says, fingers tapping against the edge of the cup. He doesnt look up to meet Cecil’s eyes. “My show starts at 11, and I need to be back by then-  _ before _ then really.” He adds, and moves to put his cup into the sink, robotically rinsing it out and setting it upside down on the plastic rack. It’s strange watching Kevin do it, something normal but still purposeful so he didn’t leave dishes for later, like a holdover of efficiency but made domestic. 

“I’ll… see you?” Cecil says, and he isn't sure if he wants to or not. A month ago, he would have sooner seen his double dead then have to endure his company again, but… after the last few days, the initial loathing had become something different, something akin to friendship if he could dare call it that (and if it hadn’t all been ruined by last night). 

Kevin nods, and slides the blazer on, stepping out of the door, leaving Cecil alone in the kitchen, the only clear sign that any of it had happened the purple cup drying in his dish rack. (He would call it surreal, but that would require it to feel like it was real in the first place). 

-

The next day, it feels like déjà vu when he steps out of his office to see Kevin sitting in a chair in the reception area, looking for all the world like the chairs weren’t absolutely wretched on your spine (they were even less comfortable to sleep in than his desk and that… was saying something). “You should come to dinner with me.” Kevin says, and Cecil opens his mouth to protest, a long line of arguments poised on the tip of his teeth, and a handful of useless wonderings lost somewhere between the back of his throat and the middle of his tongue.

He considers that maybe Kevin’s as lonely as he is, words from a meeting long past echoing in his head:  _ ‘ _ _ Most of us never woke up again’.  _ Certainly, he could understand loneliness, and it was the only thing he could think of that would explain why Kevin kept driving between the two cities and spending any time at all sitting in the station waiting for Cecil. Maybe even now that Strex was gone, the city was still asleep, too much lost to really be whole in the way it once had been- might have been. 

The arguments as to why they shouldn’t go out are easier, and only twist his stomach with guilt instead of a line of ‘what-ifs’. It was a bad idea, he had work, Carlos would call… and perhaps most damning of all, the fact that they’d ended up in bed together at all. But the words fail him, and he can’t help but think about how nice waking up beside someone was, and how nice dinner was. They got along when given the chance and it hurts that he  **_wants_ ** to go out for dinner, and he doesn’t want to spend another night staring at the wooden top of his desk, or drinking himself into oblivion and crying on the couch. (It’s what he should do, and of all the people not to go out with, Kevin is so obvious he shouldn’t even be on the list).

Because that’s what he would do, Cecil knows, and after last night, and the ability to feel alive, it’s… hard to want to go back to that. But dinner was safe... he’d just make sure that Kevin left, and he wouldn’t invite him over, and it would be  _ fine _ . Just dinner was something friends did, and there was nothing incriminating in dinner, so long as it was only that. Once was a mistake, and Carlos would… Carlos would- never know what had happened between him and Kevin.

“Fine, but we’re not going to the Arby’s.” The lights still shone above and some things felt like a betrayal to even think about. (Cecil ignores the part of him that says that even just this is a betrayal unto itself). 

-

They wake up together again, and this time Cecil can’t even try and blame the alcohol because they hadn’t _had_ _any_. They'd been completely sober, and it means that he remembers everything. The way that Kevin felt in his arms as they crashed onto the bed, and the terribly bizarre feeling of looking into a face so like his own, but so different at the same time. 

And Cecil remembers kissing him- he couldn’t remember doing that the night before, and that hurts more. The sex was one thing, but the affection and the grief that came in the simple meeting of lips? There was something deeply more intimate in that, and it felt like a loss, even more than any of the rest of it had been. That was the thing that would be worse if Carlos ever found out. 

He almost moves to get up, but the clock on the wall said it was barely past 5:27 a.m, and it’s too early to get up, even for him and the empty, hollow feeling in his chest. The light hadn’t even begun to peak through the curtains, and the house was still eerily silent, with just the soft sounds of their breathing, the sun still firmly set beyond the edges of the horizon. His show wasn’t for hours, and neither was Kevin’s. He stays staring at the ceiling for another few minutes, until the thoughts fade into the haze of a warm body, and exhaustion takes hold. He rolls over, throwing one arm over Kevin’s waist, and doesn’t think about anything else.

-

The third, and fourth times it happens, Cecil tells himself that  _ this _ is the last time, or that he’ll make Kevin leave after. And it never is. And by the time the weekend hits, it’s been almost a week of this, and it’s a little bit easier to ignore the bottles in the cupboard, and the worried looks Lance fixes him with every time he comes into the station too early, and leaves with Kevin.

Kevin doesn't look at him with pity, or like he’s lost something vital. He just looks at him as Cecil. 

-

Kevin kisses like he’s killing time; exhausted and bored, and the only way to tell any different is the way his fingers curl into Cecil’s shirt like he’s trying to keep him there without digging and embedding himself in the flesh. Cecil thinks he was right when he thought that his double was just as sad and lonely as he was because at first he thinks they kiss like two opposites; one with too much passion, and one with not enough, and now- now he just thinks they’re two sides of the same coin. There’s something to be said about sadness as a multi-faceted monster. 

Cecil just kisses like he’s desperate to feel anything at all. 

If Kevin were anyone else, Cecil might think Kevin was in love with him, or that they were in love with each other, but Kevin wasn’t anyone else, so obviously the idea was ridiculous. They kissed and they slept together, and everything was fine, wasn’t it? It’s like knowing yourself, he supposes; if he was in love, he wouldn’t kiss like he had time to spare (though there’s a part of him that he doesn’t like to give voice to, that says it’s because Kevin’s trying to distance himself from the pain that will come if-  **_when_ ** Carlos comes back).

Kevin’s hands always ball up in his shirt, and Cecil’s end up pressed against the skin of his double’s neck and his waist, like he can pull him just a little bit closer, and make him feel a little bit more human, though for which one of them it’s for, Cecil isn’t certain (he’s less certain he wants to know).

-

It’s the sixth night that they’ve been doing this… whatever  _ this _ is, that Kevin has a nightmare. Cecil wakes up, and the clock reads something around three a.m, though his brain isn’t processing the numbers, and his eyes are too bleary to read them. Beside him, Kevin is thrashing, and Cecil can make out the pained whimpers interspersed with pleas; for mercy, for forgiveness, for a thousand other things that Cecil doubts his double ever got. 

He reaches out, shaking Kevin awake. He’s still breathing too hard, and every few seconds he jerks and twitches, but slowly his breathing evens out, and the death-grip he has on the covers loosens. Cecil waits, a bit too awake now to fall back into sleep, but floating on the quiet rest regardless. The house is quiet around them, and the only light sources are a handful of small lights dotted around the room. 

“Shhh,” Cecil says, attempting to be as soothing as he knows how. “It was just a nightmare, you’re safe here.” it’s almost a lie because are any of them actually safe? (Kevin even more so here; he was the voice that replaced Cecil during the Strex occupation. The voice that spoke of the company picnic like it was a party, with candy-coated metaphors and euphemisms).

He stretches out his arm, and perhaps it’s because he’s too sleep-addled to care, or maybe it’s just because this is starting to become slightly less wrong in his head, but he doesn’t flinch or stiffen when Kevin curls into his side, hand resting over Cecil’s heart, head resting on his shoulder. They both fall back to sleep and in the morning, neither of them talk about the nightmare, neither of them even mention it.

-

They’re having dinner, but unlike all the other times. Kevin’s at his house and not at a restaurant, and pretending that the chicken isn’t a little bit overcooked. He’s laughing at something Cecil’s said, and then it hits Cecil that it’s been over a month since the Old Oak Doors had all closed, and that at some point… life had settled into something resembling normalcy. 

It had been four weeks longer than Carlos had said at maximum, and his heart breaks everytime he sees the date, but he’s starting to run out of pre-recorded horoscopes and children’s fun fact science corners, and the bottles of alcohol in his cupboard have remained untouched for weeks, except for the bit of wine he used to glaze the chicken. 

He doesn't flinch when Kevin presses a kiss to his cheek, and pulls him up to dance around the kitchen in lazy circles, or when his eyes open wide in laughter, and there’s nothing but a shiny void. He doesn’t even flinch at how the blood on Kevin's shirts had stopped being alarming and just become a fact of life. 

They fall asleep on the couch, and their necks are both sore the next morning, but it isn’t until Cecil’s reached the station that he realizes that they hadn’t even done anything except for sleep with their clothes on, with no blankets but the knitted one that had covered their feet from where it had fallen at some point in the night. It’s… a strange realization. It’s domestic in a way that seems wrong. The sex is unforgiveable as it is, and if it were a different situation, Cecil might almost be able to push last night off as platonic or familial, but that wasn’t; that was romantic (it wasn’t even lust).

-

Lance looks at him with pity and worry every time he exits the studio after his broadcast and Kevin’s sitting in the uncomfortable hard-backed plastic chairs waiting for him. Lance doesn’t say anything about it, and Cecil is grateful because he doesn’t know what he’d say if he  _ was _ asked about it. He talks about Carlos on the radio, but the universe doesn't answer the unspoken questions, and part of Cecil is starting to hate the universe that tore Carlos from him in the first place. 

Kevin doesn’t fill the voids left by Carlos. His shape was wrong and too much like Cecil’s own, and even more now that the rictus grin was mostly healing, the open skin beginning to close into something that Cecil knows will become a silvery scar eventually. His voice was wrong, but even for all the things that aren't right- are too dissimilar to the way they  _ should  _ be, and the things that are too similar in the wrong places, Kevin  _ does _ fill part of the void.

He’s a warm body, and a figure that won’t judge Cecil for losing Carlos because he doesn't look at him and think ‘without the other half’, he looks at him and thinks ‘Cecil’, thinks ‘double’, thinks the words that don't keep equalling ‘this is a mistake, and the universe is all to blame’.

They’re doubles in the same way that Abby and- and Maddy (Kevin had told him his sister’s name) were: similar and different, though he looks at Kevin and can’t help seeing something that was so much like him before Strex destroyed it, and it’s only gotten clearer the more they’ve talked: memories that were never real, and recollections that had gotten pushed down and forgotten come back, and it’s hard not to see himself in it: the reflection is distorted, but still so painstakingly familiar. 

The void is still there, and the feeling in his chest that’s dark and corroded hasn’t vanished, but some of the edges are filled. The places Kevin fills fit differently, but not any worse (and Cecil almost wished that they were, maybe he’d feel less guilty if touching Kevin felt like puzzle pieces from two seperate puzzles forced together instead of just one that fit on the other side of his piece).

-

He starts reading his editorials to Kevin, and it makes sense. They’re both radio hosts and journalists, and Kevin can give better critiques than anyone else can because he knows what to look for. And it’s better- they’re better than they had been since Carlos left: one amazing editorial beats the thousands of terrible ones that all end up in the garbage. (Half of them get fed to the toaster, and the other half just end up in the wastebasket, because he can’t seem to write anything that isn’t guilt-ridden and desperate, though it’s getting better).

Kevin cooks, and Cecil writes, and writes, and writes, until there’s a small stack of editorials and horoscopes, and a thousand other segments for the show. The next night, he’s the one cooking (and it turns out marginally better than the chicken), and he pretends not to notice the way that Kevin’s editorials are full of rough pen lines crossing out words, and sentences, and whole paragraphs. He doesn’t ask what he’s writing, or why the pages are so full of crossed out passages.

-

The days turn to weeks turn to months passing by in the way time does. Things change, and they don’t change. Cecil gets used to Kevin, and the slow way he’s healing. He wakes up one morning to the smell of baked bread and humming. The humming stays; old songs, hymns, showtunes, half-remembered commercial jingles from when they were both children, when Kevin is happy- actually happy, and not the StrexCorp simulacrum of happiness.

-

Lance stops looking at him with pity and worry and all the other synonyms for unwanted, sympathetic concern after Cecil comes out to meet Kevin and sees them talking about movies and makeup like old friends. Lance is sitting at the desk, but leaning forward and gesturing with his hands, and Kevin is standing in front of the desk, just as animated. It’s a little odd to see Kevin in anything but the uncomfortable dark blue chairs, but he still presses a kiss to his cheek, and Kevin smiles at him with something that looks like a legitimate smile and kisses him before looking back at Lance with another point about using something purple to remove yellow tones. 

-

Cecil has three half empty bottles of hard liquor in his cabinet, and he doesn’t remember if he wants to forget Carlos, the distance, the affair, or Kevin. Maybe it’s some combination of them all- it probably is (and even then, he thinks it would help if they were empty and not-half empty bottles, and Kevin hadn’t spent virtually every single night in his bed).

-

Carlos calls, and it’s like all the capillaries in Cecil’s heart contract and fill with blood, because it’s Carlos, and he loves him so much, even if he’s trapped in the Desert Otherworld. Expecting the call doesn’t make it any less wonderful to hear his voice. They talk most nights because as Carlos said, the fact that the sun doesn't really break into even day cycles makes it harder to keep on a twenty-four hour schedule, and there was something about circadian rhythms he’d mentioned before, that, for as much as Cecil loved to hear Carlos talk about science he hadn’t quite understood. 

Cecil spends half an hour on the small balcony talking to him because Kevin’s in the shower, and not even notoriously thin apartment walls are so thin that the sound of a shower would be that clear, at least… in any apartment that wasn’t his. His pants are riding low, and the yellow dress shirt he threw on is Kevin’s (the blood splatter on the cuff would be enough of a symbol, if the fact it was a  **yellow** dress-shirt wasn't). He feels so guilty for it- from talking to Carlos half-dressed in Kevin’s shirt, while the man in question showered inside, but at the same time, he thinks he should feel more guilty than he does.

The call disconnects, and he stays looking out over the city for a long time after, staring blankly at the endless horizon as the sun sets (unusually quiet for the month), his thoughts lost somewhere in the sand wastes. He stays like that, mostly unmoving until the sliding door opens behind him and arms slip around his waist, a soft kiss greeting him behind the ear. 

He looks down at the arms around his waist, and can’t help but think about how different they are from Carlos’, but how alike they are to his own. The same shifting and squirming tentacles, though his were purple, and Kevin’s were yellow.

“Come back to bed, double-mine.” Kevin says, voice soft, from where his chin is resting on Cecil’s shoulder. “Your show has been over for hours, and we have nowhere else to be.”

The scene is domestic, familiar even-- he and Carlos have played it out a hundred times on both sides. But Carlos wasn’t here, Kevin was. Carlos was off in some other desert landscape doing science and... and not being here. (He had said a week, and here they were, over four months later).

-

Perhaps the worst part is how easily Cecil gets used to it. He gets used to waking up in the mornings with the bed warm beside him, a body in bed with him, Kevin’s warmth in his arms. On the good nights- the better nights at least, he wakes up to buns, or a cake, or cookies fresh from the oven. But those are the good nights, and they’re far less common than the bad ones. 

On the bad ones, Cecil wakes up and the bed is cold, and he walks into the kitchen to see Kevin mostly asleep at the counter, angrily scrawled notes and discarded broadcast sections covering endless pieces of paper stacked beside him, and overflowing off the table. Some scars run deep, and on those nights, Cecil makes coffee, and they talk at the table until Kevin has to go back to Desert Bluffs. (On the bad nights, Cecil pretends that he doesn’t feel himself come over with a chill when he wakes up to an empty bed. He’s not certain what he’d do if he was left alone  _ again _ ).

-

It was bound to happen eventually that one of them would wear each other’s clothes. They wore the same size, and the only thing that told them apart was the style and colour. Even months later, Kevin still wore the bright, business-appropriate attire Strex had approved, even if business-appropriate meant splattered in blood. But it happens, and he doesn’t realize until he sees Kevin leaning against Lance’s desk talking with the receptionist that the green cardigan that Kevin was wearing wasn’t covered in blood, but rather one of  _ his _ . 

The sleeves are pulled up, revealing the yellow tentacles moving sluggishly over his double’s arms, and it’s… a strange sight. He’d gotten so used to seeing Kevin with the drops and smears of blood, partly because it had been months, and also partly because even had Kevin  _ wanted _ to buy new clothes, he couldn’t unless he did it here and he wasn’t making nearly enough at the radio station to afford for a whole new wardrobe. Cecil didn’t think much about Desert Bluffs- didn't want to, but he knew enough to know that things weren’t good. 

He doesn't say anything about the cardigan, just kisses Kevin, and half listens to his and Lance’s conversation about the use of red eyeshadow and chapstick in place of lipstick. (He ignores the part of him that thinks that Kevin looks good in his sweater and in something that wasn’t covered in blood. That was… that was sweet and normal in a way that Kevin wasn’t **supposed** to be. He was still **with** **_Carlos_** , he was still in love **with** **_Carlos…_** but it had been months, and the promised two weeks had come and gone almost thirteen times. 

-

It had been seven months, and maybe it wasn’t love, but it was something. Kevin didn’t kiss like he was waiting for the day Cecil tossed him out anymore, though the fingers left grasping at his shirt still hadn’t changed. There was an interesting desperation in it all, overlaid with something that if they were anything other than doubles, Cecil doubts anyone would realize was desperation. But they were, and they were so achingly similar (and some days, it’s nearly enough to make Cecil want to run and pretend that none of this had ever happened, and other days, it’s a relief in and of itself to have someone that understands, and sees through the walls and pretenses). 

(There’s something about the way hands are left clutching, that makes Cecil wonder what had happened to make Kevin this way, but he’ll never ask).

Cecil kisses like a man possessed, with hands pressed to skin that mirrored his own, and with a force that aimed to hold close. That hadn’t changed, though sometimes, it was a soft thing. Sometimes, he kissed Kevin like what they were doing was normal. A kiss in greeting at the station, a trail of ones dotted along the tentacle tattoos on the bad nights, one in return to the ones that Kevin pressed to his cheek when the sun was setting and they were spinning in lazy circles in the living room, sometimes to the weather, sometimes to Kevin’s humming, and sometimes, to nothing at all. 

They kiss with the familiarity that comes from months, and it’s worse because it is a soft thing now, tinged with something else, yes- but it’s not passion, or lust, or even guilt. (When Cecil could still pretend it was just about the sex and the lonliness, it made it easier to pretend that it was never going to last and that Carlos would come home soon. But the months had come and gone, and at some point, it had stopped being about using Kevin as a placeholder, and become… not love, but something more than a fling). 

-   


He’s not in love with Kevin. But at some point, he cleared out half a drawer for him, and there was a Desert Bluffs Community Radio mug in his cupboard that usually ended up beside the NVCR one. Carlos still called, and the guilt that gnawed at Cecil’s heart only seems to be all-consuming some days. The bottles of liquor in his cabinet were all covered in dust, and even the kissing doesn’t burn like it used to- it doesn’t burn at all anymore, and he doesn’t know when that had changed. 

Most days, Kevin wears at least something of Cecil’s, and eventually, when Cecil says goodbye to Carlos on their calls, the chasm between them seems a little bit less… like the distance between all good things and him. (He doesn’t say anything about Kevin- still hasn’t said anything, and it’s been months, and the promise that he would stop this, would tell Carlos the truth… seems like barely more than a dream now).

Logically, Cecil thinks that if Carlos were to come home one of these days, he would see the debris of a life continued, a life rebuilt. There’s a mug in the cupboard, and clothes in the closet that don't belong to Cecil, but… the idea that he will come home also begins to stop being the all-important ‘will’ and ‘when’ and becomes ‘if’.

-

Time escapes (though not literally) and it flows, and one day Cecil wakes up and realizes it’s been eight months since Carlos got trapped on the wrong side of the doors, and seven since he and Kevin started.. whatever this is. (He would say they were together but they  **can’t** be. He’s still with Carlos, still  **_loves_ ** Carlos- he has to and he does but... but at some point, maybe he fell a little bit in love with his double too).

He’s on the air, because it’s evening yet, though the news that day had been quiet, at least… as quiet as Night Vale ever was, but it was home, and it had always been home. 

He’s sitting at the microphone when Kevin appears in the booth window, a notepad held up to the glass saying ‘I feel like an intern again.’ (and he gets it, really, truly he gets it. There’s something almost nostalgic in holding up notes to the window). He’s trying not to laugh, and is also wondering if Kevin stole the notepad from Lance, or if he asked for it, when the door opens and Kevin steps in. 

“Listeners, Kevin has just entered the studio.” It’s not the first time he’s mentioned him on air, even if it had been less than Carlos (but he’d spent a year pining for Carlos, and a year with him… and now over half a year away from him), and mentioning Kevin in a casual, affectionate manner had just become… normal really, an open secret, like his pining for Carlos had been. People knew they were… together. “While I see what he wants, I bring you now to the  [ weather ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDhOYvuekYw) .”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry? Please forgive me? (I'm not sorry, I should be, I know). 
> 
> Today’s proverb: {indeterminate buzzing} Please stand by, as we transfer you to another universe.
> 
> If you ever wanted more post-Strex Kevin if he didn't end up in the Desert Otherworld, you're in luck! I'm working on a companion piece to this form his perspective, where you'll get to see some cryogenically frozen darlings that got cut from this fic, more of Desert Bluffs (and what it's like over there), and also get to see what Kevin was doing during the first month between not getting thrown through the door and when he comes to Cecil for the picture. 
> 
> Please feed the author comments, i would much appreciate it!


End file.
